The 8th International 432 MHz and up EME conference took place in Paris during 1998 August 7/8/9 week end. About 80 OM and 40 XYL/QRP attended this conference, which was organized by Jean Jacques F1EHN, Hervé F5HRY, Olivier F5MZN and William F6DLA.

While the XYL were gathering for a PARIS by night visit of the monuments on friday evening, the OM were listening to the firsts talks in the conference room : The Eiffel tower and its early use for radio by F6DLA, video of the EA9 expedition by EA3DXU, 1kW TWT power supply by CT1DMK and 13 cm allocation band problems by G3LTF. Just after, people gathered around the flea market, where high power equipments could be found ...

Saturday lectures began with the amazing job done by CT1DMK about EME and radio astronomy. It was followed by an history of the 70 cm NL by K2UYH, and 10 GHz preamplifiers by S57UUU. After lunch, we had a lecture on thick boom influence by DL6WU, then OE5JFL presented his stand alone EME controller. HB9BBD showed an impressive video on his new 10m dish, S57UUU gave another talk about his TWT power supply presented in 1996, followed by WA7CJO about the 24 GHz use of 12-18 GHz TWTs. G3SEK discussed about polarization problems, K2UYH spoke about amateur the SETI league, and PY5ZBU ended the conference with a video presentation of Rio de Janeiro, as a possible destination for the coming conference ... During this time, ladies went on a free program in the morning (Louvre museum, "Grands Magasins" ...), and visited the Eiffel Tower and Montmartre during the afternoon driven by our XYL. Saturday evening's dinner resulted in a very hot (temperature rose up above 35°C which is unusual for Paris) and friendly meeting. Lots of prizes were given during the big tombola (raffle) ! Tubes, amplifier and preamplifier, transverter, DSP and much more went to various people, who seemed quite pleased with them. The organization crew went to bed at around 3 AM, after having a test (taste ?) on several "8th EME Conference" champagne bottles ...

Five hours later, the ladies were on the way to Versailles castle where they had lunch after the visit. A short boat trip on the river Seine ended XYL's program. The OM went to visit the Nancay radio astronomy station, with its huge decimetric telescope. It was a 200 km bus journey still under a very hot weather and weak air conditionning ... On the way, the visit was introduced by François BIRAUD, professional radio astronomer, and videos on F3VS 2m huge array and TM8EME activity were showed. The lunch took place in a restaurant near Nancay, and the following general discussion was driven by G3SEK. As usual, many different opinions were reported on difficult problems such as contests, activity week ends, schedules and so on ... Ian G3SEK tried to get through, but more than one day would have been necessary to conclude on these subjects ! Thus we decided to speak about the next one, and Don PY5ZBU gave more interesting details about Brazil possibilities. As far as it appeared that there was no other solid proposal we could discuss about, and regarding Don's facilities in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro was decided to be the right place for 2000. Sunday's program finished by a late dinner at the IBIS hotel, in a very friendly atmosphere, listening to Nadine and Ian's music, drinking some special "chouchen" brought from Brittany by F5PAU ...

Listening to people comments during and after the conference, we were pleased to hear numerous thanks, as greetings to the work we did to make this conference as successful as possible. The balance of the conference is near zero, which is fine for a $ 25 000 total budget.

We thank all the people who attend the conference and/or helped us during the organization, and wish to see you again soon in southern latitudes.

73's from the PARIS 1998 International EME conference organization crew : F1EHN, F5HRY, F5MZN, F6DLA.